Introducing: Veil of Delusions

It’s hard not to love bands that successfully fuse huge metal riffs with awesome female-led vocals. Dutch five-piece Veil of Delusions are a superb example of this, fleeting between melodic death metal and dark symphonic overtones that bring the likes of Nightwish to mind.

The band, who hail from Oss, Eindhoven and Amstelveen in the Netherlands, have created their own unique melodic sound. The superb, catchy vocals of Zoë Tilly are complemented by the heavier, more intense backing vocals of guitarist Martin Vos, huge metal riffs and big solos from Martin and Xander ten Boden and relentlessly pounding percussion support from Rob Reijs.

Martin describes the Veil of Delusion style as “heavy, melodic and diverse,” as songs can jump between melodic rock and full on metal at the flip of a switch and the difference between his vocals and Zoë’s is hugely diverse, but they just work wonderfully well.

This is portrayed on debut album Echoes of Dawn, which was released last year. The Chase may be the best example of how their sound works, opening up with clean guitar riffs and big booming grunts from Martin, then heavier guitar riffing and a big drum roll brings Zoë’s spine-tinglingly good vocal delivery in. A burst of screamed vocals follows accompanied by drawn-out guitar chords for the chorus, then the song begins to build with some huge vocals from Zoë and driving staccatoed guitar chord riffs. The six-minute track combines everything that’s great about this band, including a fast, near one-minute long guitar solo before one final rendition of the verse and chorus.

And bringing a more melodic side of the band is the excellent Across The Sky. It opens up with an awesome guitar riff that you can’t help but nod along or air guitar (depending on your persuasion) then Zoë’s vocal melody is amazing, followed by a little awesome little guitar solo and mini-riff. This is a superbly catchy little track, which you can check out below:

The album goes out with a bang with excellent final track They Wonder, which opens up with a funky riff and bursts of drums then a rising drumbeat that leads into a huge scream from Martin and full-band smash-up. The grunts of Martin return for a massive first verse before the melodic and delicate vocals of Zoë return only to be blasted into oblivion by another onslaught of screams and huge metal riffing. It ends with some more awesome riffs that lead into one last huge lung-buster from Zoë. I like albums that go out with an awesome song to remember, and this is certainly one of those.

Veil of Delusions was born out of a previous band called Desolace Divine, which all members but Zoë were members of. They took a different direction, took some songs from that band, wrote some new ones, found Zoë and went from strength to strength. The band has already played all over Europe despite being together a little over 18 months, including a successful UK tour last year.

Martin told us: “Playing in the UK was a refreshing experience, mainly because the audiences were way more energetic and less shy than what we had seen at shows up until that point. We are definitely coming back when we can!”

If you missed them, then here’s a taster of how great they are live from Birmingham in September:

As the first band we’ve ever spoken to which is from the Netherlands, we asked Martin for his take on the current state of the music industry.

Martin said: “As a band full of people who have day jobs outside of the music industry I think our experience with it isn’t all that expansive, but I will say that some things could change to help new bands out.

“Bands hardly get compensated for playing gigs unless they have a certain amount of following, which makes it hard for smaller bands to keep playing shows if they have to keep putting in money to do so. The exposure on social media is also a tricky thing fraught with certain rules to the system that aren’t all that well known or talked about.”

We can expect to hear more from Veil of Delusions soon, as the band are hard at work writing new songs and planning gigs, with the aim of playing as many shows as possible.